Real Housewives of Atlanta: Praise the Pageant

Other than Cynthia’s Pageant, not much else happened tonight. This season is dragging, but with a girls’ trip coming up next week, I have high hopes.

Kenya shows up at the Bailey Institute with a girl that she’s mentoring. Who is letting her mentor their kids? Cynthia complains to Kenya about doing all the work herself, and that she had to cut ties with Porsha, even though she really didn’t have to. She says she doesn’t need anyone’s help though; she just wants the ladies to sit in the audience and enjoy the show. Kenya obviously can’t take a hint, because she asks Cynthia if she can be a judge. After what happened in the beginning of the season with Kenya making fun of all the girls auditioning for the Bailey Institute, Cynthia is quick to point out that behavior like that won’t be tolerated. Oh of course not, Kenya is all class; just ignore every single thing she’s done this season. So, Cynthia says yes. She’ll love for Kenya to be a judge.

Porsha and Kordell meet for dinner, and apparently they don’t spend a lot of time together. Porsha’s been focusing on her charity work, and Kordell wants her to be home earlier, you know, put food on the table and rub his feet. This guy is so controlling, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that his wife is much younger than he is. He’s ready for Porsha to have a baby, and so is she. She wants to keep working and possibly have a nanny, which is a no-no for Kordell. He’s traditional as Porsha says, and he wants her to be home. Because she doesn’t want to give up working (which is very part-time charity-work by the way, not a full-time career,) he takes it as her not being ready to have kids She wants to prove to him that she can have it all, and so she decides to borrow her brother’s kid to see if she can do it. She says she’ll take her niece Jayden for two weeks, two weeks? Who would give their toddler up for that long? I thought it was going to be a day or two, and yet they settle on a week.

Phaedra and Apollo have Kandi and Doug over for aphrodisiacs cooked by none other than Chef Roblé, another Bravolebrity. He’s serving sexy food to the couples, and Phaedra is all hot and bothered by them. She starts to feel sexy and rub on herself, and says she can’t control her senses. Next, Kandi is in the recording studio with her dad to preview her new gospel song. She wonders how people would perceive a woman with a sex toy line doing gospel.

NeNe is home for few hours, and Cynthia is over there missing her friend. NeNe misses the gossip of Atlanta most of all. Oh, she loses the hair off the back of her neck for some good tea, AKA gossip. NeNe says that working on “The New Normal” is a dream-come-true, but learning her lines is hard, especially when she can barely remember her own name. Cynthia tells NeNe about Kenya being a judge in the pageant, and NeNe does one of her infamous eye rolls. After she acted like a fool at every other event they’ve been to, why would Cynthia trust her to be a judge? Cynthia thinks it will be OK, but does act like she didn’t want to say yes. NeNe says “a fool is a fool.” Then they talk about the upcoming trip to L.A. to visit NeNe, and she’s worried about the drama they may bring.

The previews for this episode made it seem like Porsha lost her niece while she was babysitting. Of course she didn’t, but she was a little frazzled taking care of her. Luckily she relied on her dog to do most of the sitting while she made chicken for Kordell.

At the pageant, all hell breaks loose as Cynthia and her co-host Boris Kodjoe say the wrong names for all the girls walking the runway. What a disaster. Cynthia didn’t just play it off for the audience’s sake; she instead was like “hey, that’s not her name!” Pretty awkward, but it gets worse. Then, they want to fix the problem and announce an intermission, but then they’re forced to come back and continue because they forgot an entire group of girls. They move on to formal wear, and then as they tally the votes, Cynthia and Boris stand on stage saying how awkward it is to be silent. If you look past those few disasters, it ended up being OK. Everyone was proud of Cynthia, mostly because they all showed up too late to see what happened, and her ego is boosted even more this season.

A blah episode, but I’m looking forward to the trip next week. Atlanta needs a reboot for the next season; maybe shorten the season if that’s what it’s come to. There’s just not enough material in order to have fifteen episodes anymore, right?